NVIDIA Introduces Low-Profile GeForce GT 1030

[TheLexMachine]

Will this require a new kernel, or is it plug-and-play with any recent kernel that is already compatible with Pascal? Will Mesa and libDRM need to be updated as well?

Nothing needs to be updated. Just be sure you are running the latest Nvidia driver (from their website or whatever PPA you use) before you install the card and it works just fine.

[starshipeleven]

I guess AMD would do it nice when the DAL/DC will be integrated in the kernel (if); but amd has no fanless polaris card atm.

XFX makes a fanless 460 and Gigabyte's 460 and 550 fans stop if the card is not under a decent 3D load (they call the feature "3D active fan"). Both are normal height and dual-slot though.
Theoretically in the next months we might see fanless rx 550 too, first cards coming out are always the bullshit "OC gaming" ones with huge heatsinks and fans.

[ElectricPrism]

_ _

[veikok]

I could not care less about gaming, but I'm interested in GT 1030 VDPAU performance, decoding UHD VP9 and HEVC under Linux, preferably Fedora 25/26 with Nvidia proprietary drivers compared to Intel iGPU. AFAIK, only since Kabylake, Intel iGPU supports UHD hardware decoding.
Clearly, GT 1030 with passive heatsing could make a good upgrade for desktop performance.

[TheLexMachine]

I could not care less about gaming, but I'm interested in GT 1030 VDPAU performance, decoding UHD VP9 and HEVC under Linux, preferably Fedora 25/26 with Nvidia proprietary drivers compared to Intel iGPU. AFAIK, only since Kabylake, Intel iGPU supports UHD hardware decoding.
Clearly, GT 1030 with passive heatsing could make a good upgrade for desktop performance.

Nvidia hasn't enabled UHD VDPAU features for the Pascal GPUs - they won't decode anything above 1080P - and on the development side have abandoned VDPAU in favor of NVDECODE, so the card is worthless for UHD on Linux, though the initial tests show it works well on Windows, despite not being a great HTPC card.

[TheLexMachine]

Thank you for your message! I was really unaware of these VDPAU&NVDECODE problems & doomed future.
I'll be soon on the market to replace my fanless 520GT to get hevc 4k hardware decode + hdr (with hdmi 2.0b) and run with kodi.
This card looked really nice for that, but pitty, now a lot less.

Do you have any recommendation on a budget to fill the HTPC 4K HDR requirements (now or within 1 year)?

I guess AMD would do it nice when the DAL/DC will be integrated in the kernel (if); but amd has no fanless polaris card atm.

For add-in cards, there is nothing. I don't know the state of AMD's Linux drivers at the moment and nobody is talking about them, so I can't offer any alternative from them. As for Nvidia, it will be at least one year before these Pascal cards are useful for HTPC, assuming Nvidia ever gets around to fixing VDPAU up or the media player devs (VLC, KODI, etc) get to work on implementing NVDECODE (formerly NVCUVID) in their media players. Only the latest FFMPEG (3.X) supports it - it doesn't work very well at this time - and distros - for whatever reason - are all using the older 2.X, so it will be a long time before Nvidia users get these cards functional unless the 2.X branch gets updated with NVDECODE. I think it's important for every Linux media enthusiast to start pushing the devs to get it working in media players, because Linux system vendors are shipping their products with the new Pascal GPUs and obviously, some of us want to upgrade to Pascal or use what we've just bought. Sadly, Intel is really the only game in town for Linux HTPC at the moment.

[veikok]

Nvidia hasn't enabled UHD VDPAU features for the Pascal GPUs - they won't decode anything above 1080P - and on the development side have abandoned VDPAU in favor of NVDECODE, so the card is worthless for UHD on Linux, though the initial tests show it works well on Windows, despite not being a great HTPC card.

What would be the source of that information? Can you provide link?

[TheLexMachine]

What would be the source of that information? Can you provide link?

See for yourself....

Decoder capabilities:

name level macbs width height
----------------------------------------------------
MPEG1 0 65536 4096 4096
MPEG2_SIMPLE 3 65536 4096 4096
MPEG2_MAIN 3 65536 4096 4096
H264_BASELINE 41 65536 4096 4096
H264_MAIN 41 65536 4096 4096
H264_HIGH 41 65536 4096 4096
VC1_SIMPLE 1 8190 2048 2048
VC1_MAIN 2 8190 2048 2048
VC1_ADVANCED 4 8190 2048 2048
MPEG4_PART2_SP 3 8192 2048 2048
MPEG4_PART2_ASP 5 8192 2048 2048
DIVX4_QMOBILE 0 8192 2048 2048
DIVX4_MOBILE 0 8192 2048 2048
DIVX4_HOME_THEATER 0 8192 2048 2048
DIVX4_HD_1080P 0 8192 2048 2048
DIVX5_QMOBILE 0 8192 2048 2048
DIVX5_MOBILE 0 8192 2048 2048
DIVX5_HOME_THEATER 0 8192 2048 2048
DIVX5_HD_1080P 0 8192 2048 2048
H264_CONSTRAINED_BASELINE 41 65536 4096 4096
H264_EXTENDED 41 65536 4096 4096
H264_PROGRESSIVE_HIGH 41 65536 4096 4096
H264_CONSTRAINED_HIGH 41 65536 4096 4096
H264_HIGH_444_PREDICTIVE 41 65536 4096 4096
HEVC_MAIN 153 262144 8192 8192
HEVC_MAIN_10 --- not supported ---
HEVC_MAIN_STILL --- not supported ---
HEVC_MAIN_12 --- not supported ---
HEVC_MAIN_444 --- not supported ---

That's just about the same as the VDPAUINFO data from a year ago and these are from the latest drivers. Nvidia gimped the Linux drivers from the get-go and the first column for the H.264 codec should read "51" not "41", which is why it can't do 4K, because 4K H.264 files are "5.1" level content. All the 4K H.264 files I throw at it give decoder errors saying the video is unsupported. The card works perfectly under Windows 10. The settings for HEVC are garbage too, so the GPU can't use it at all. Using NVDECODE is the only way to currently get 4K decoded on these cards and Nvidia's own dev literature states that VDPAU would be replaced in their toolkit by NVDECODE, which it has. The problem is that devs weren't paying attention and did not bother to get a head start on implementing NVDECODE in media players. MPV has it, but it's experimental and doesn't work very well. VLC has nothing and only the latest FFMPEG 3.X build has experimental and basic NVDECODE support, courtesy of Nvidia.

[veikok]

That's just about the same as the VDPAUINFO data from a year ago and these are from the latest drivers. Nvidia gimped the Linux drivers from the get-go and the first column for the H.264 codec should read "51" not "41", which is why it can't do 4K, because 4K H.264 files are "5.1" level content. All the 4K H.264 files I throw at it give decoder errors saying the video is unsupported. The card works perfectly under Windows 10. The settings for HEVC are garbage too, so the GPU can't use it at all. Using NVDECODE is the only way to currently get 4K decoded on these cards and Nvidia's own dev literature states that VDPAU would be replaced in their toolkit by NVDECODE, which it has. The problem is that devs weren't paying attention and did not bother to get a head start on implementing NVDECODE in media players. MPV has it, but it's experimental and doesn't work very well. VLC has nothing and only the latest FFMPEG 3.X build has experimental and basic NVDECODE support, courtesy of Nvidia.

Thank you for that information. I just lost all interest in GT 1030, it's worthless.